How a ‘Second Chance’ College Produced the Team to Beat

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The Berkeley College men’s basketball team warming up in a hallway under the bleachers at the Borough of Manhattan Community College last month. The team has won 50 games in a row.CreditCreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

By Louie Lazar

Feb. 27, 2017

New York City’s most dominant college basketball team was established by a gangly business professor two decades ago and has no gym of its own. Its campus consists of two buildings near Grand Central Terminal. The team rents its courts, including a rubber one on the second floor of another college near the Financial District.

The roster includes a former resident of a homeless shelter and many players from low-income areas of Brooklyn and the Bronx. Because the school does not offer athletic scholarships, the players typically borrow thousands of dollars for their education.

Most of them have part-time jobs, and they commute by subway to school and to practice, which lasts until 10:30 p.m. Several of them are fathers.

These are the men who play for the Manhattan branch of Berkeley College, a for-profit school not to be confused with the University of California’s flagship campus. The Berkeley Knights have won 50 consecutive games and two straight national championships in Division II of the United States Collegiate Athletic Association, an organization of about 80 small schools.

This season’s team will take a 26-0 record, the No. 1 seeding and an average victory margin of 27 points to the national tournament, which will run from Wednesday to Saturday in Uniontown, Pa.

But current and former players say their team’s success transcends basketball. They describe the program’s founder and coach, Chris Christiansen, 64, as a father figure who recruits young men who have often struggled elsewhere and helps them thrive in the classroom — and long after they leave Berkeley.

“I call Berkeley ‘the second chance school,’” Hector Navarro, a former player, recently said. “They take kids who have no hope and give them some.”

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Jeffrey Mejia giving his grandfather a kiss before leaving his home in the Bronx, which he shares with his mother, right. Behind them was his grandfather’s caretaker.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

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Mejia, a senior captain, in a home game against Alfred State in January. His scrappiness on the court during a summer camp first impressed Coach Chris Christiansen.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

Jeffrey Mejia, 20, is Berkeley’s starting point guard and a co-captain, who as a teenager lived in a Bronx homeless shelter for about a year with his mother and sister.

“Feeling like I didn’t have a home — I was really ashamed and didn’t want to tell anybody,” he said.

Mejia found an escape on his high school basketball team but felt rudderless after graduation and remained introverted because of his shelter experiences.

That summer, intent on “getting an education and using basketball to get it,” he played at a camp in front of college coaches, including Christiansen.

Out of dozens of players, the 5-foot-10 Mejia impressed Christiansen the most. The reason had little to do with talent.

“When the ball was on the ground,” Christiansen said, “he was the first one that dove for it. And I love that in somebody. Because when you see that, you can teach them almost anything.”

Johnnie Green, 28, is Mejia’s fellow captain, a 6-5 senior forward originally from the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. At 26, he was bouncing between low-paying retail jobs, he said, “just trying to find myself.”

He wanted to start his own business. But the odds seemed steep: He had dropped out of a community college to help support his mother and his daughter, Lilliana, who was born to Green’s high school girlfriend when he was 17.

He found solace playing in prestigious street ball tournaments, like those at the Cage on West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village and at Rucker Park in Harlem.

Christiansen saw Green in a league at Basketball City, a Lower Manhattan complex, and introduced himself. He gave Green a tour of Berkeley and asked about his aspirations beyond basketball.

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Coach Christiansen, in a crouch, rallying his team during the game against Alfred State. Jon Pena, the associate head coach, and a player raised their fists above him.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

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Coach Christiansen, 64, teaching a business class. When Berkeley hired him in 1995, the college had no athletic program.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

“I want to be an entrepreneur,” Green said.

“That’s good,” Christiansen recalled telling him, “but you need education and experience.” Berkeley, he told Green, would offer him an opportunity to get a college degree and to play the game he loved.

Green said that he was skeptical of coaches who “feed you all of the good stuff” and then fail to deliver on promises, but that Christiansen seemed straightforward, telling him: School will be expensive. There will be student loans. (The average annual cost for a student receiving federal aid at Berkeley’s campuses in New York State is about $24,600, according to the Education Department’s College Scorecard.)

But if you work hard and do well in class, Christiansen said, you will be rewarded with a good job down the road.

A Coach’s Unlikely Journey

Christiansen lives about seven blocks from his teaching job, in a one-bedroom apartment with his dachshund, Charlie. “He’s my best buddy,” Christiansen said.

The coach is the assistant chairman for Berkeley’s management department; his peers chose him as the faculty member of the year in 2000.

Christiansen asks that his players maintain a minimum grade-point average of 2.5, half a point above the U.S.C.A.A.’s highest requirement. If a player struggles in class, Christiansen talks to his professor and arranges for tutoring.

“He’s hard on you,” said Kenton Chan-Man, who was a guard on Berkeley’s first national title team. “You’re a student first, athlete second.”

Berkeley does not track its athletic teams’ graduation rates. But based on the recollections of nearly a dozen former players, few of their teammates dropped out.

The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs began investigating Berkeley and three other for-profit schools in 2015 over concerns about dropout and loan-default rates. (See accompanying article.) The investigation, which is unrelated to athletic programs, is continuing, a department spokeswoman said.

All 16 current members of the basketball team are pursuing degrees from Christiansen’s department, and its career-training programs meet the federal Education Department’s so-called gainful employment standard, which measures whether graduates earn enough to repay their student loans.

About 25 years ago, Christiansen held a corporate job at Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield and lived in a four-bedroom house on Long Island. But in the early 1990s, his marriage ended, his parents died and he was laid off.

He sank into a midlife crisis, he said, and faced a decision: Return to the corporate world or “do what I’ve always wanted to do: teach.”

“So I did this crazy thing,” he said. He started working as a high school substitute teacher for $50 a day. He eventually applied for college teaching jobs, and Berkeley hired him in 1995.

Berkeley had no athletic program when Christiansen arrived. Founded in 1931 as a private secretarial school, it expanded into a college offering two- and four-year degrees from eight campuses in New York and New Jersey, plus an online school.

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Coach Christiansen with some of his players in Berkeley’s student lounge in Manhattan after teaching a class.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

Christiansen, 6-5 and rail thin, had attended St. John’s University and tried out unsuccessfully for the varsity basketball team. At Berkeley, he soon began passing out fliers to start a team, he said, and “got some bites.”

The first few seasons consisted of mostly scrimmages, then games in a recreation league at Basketball City, which went well. “And I started having this vision,” Christiansen said. “If I can do it here, what about trying the real stuff?”

The Knights began stitching together a ragtag schedule, finally joining a conference in 2005-6. For several seasons, they practiced just once a week and played only road games, sometimes getting blown out by N.C.A.A. teams.

“But we competed,” Sean Conner, a former player and ex-assistant coach, said. “We played hard.”

In its first league season, Berkeley went 16-3 over all and won the Hudson Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s postseason tournament. Christiansen was named coach of the year.

Berkeley began the 2015-16 season against Mercy College, an N.C.A.A. Division II school, which beat the Knights by 5 points.

They haven’t lost since.

Full-Court Support

On a recent foggy night, Christiansen and Mejia rode the subway together downtown, then walked to the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s gym, where the team holds most practices and about half of its home games.

The rubber court is springy but rough on the knees, according to Christiansen, who before practice applied a balm from Chinatown called Kwan Loong Oil to some of the players.

Mejia’s teammates filtered into the gym, including his fellow starters — all seniors: the leading scorer, Massiah Merritt, a crafty and acrobatic shooting guard (14.8 points per game); Stephon Jennings, a 6-5 forward, who leads Berkeley in rebounding (9.2 per game); Dondre Simmons, a slashing guard; and Green, a steady inside presence averaging about 12 points and 7 rebounds.

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Pena with Brandon Bermeo, a sophomore, during a game in January. Pena assures players that the coaches are there to help: “I tell them, ‘If you go through something, we’ve got to be the first ones you call.’”CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

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Berkeley guard Massiah Merritt’s son, Jasiah, 6, joined the line of players at the conclusion of the Alfred State game.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

Practice began at 8:30 p.m. (Any player who arrives late receives a half-game suspension. Cursing is prohibited.)

Players huddled for a prayer, then ran full-court drills. With each pass, ballhandlers shouted the recipient’s name; after missed layups or dunks, players flashed embarrassed smiles and dropped to the floor for a mandatory 25 push-ups.

Christiansen looked at his cellphone. He had missed a call from a former player, who had just separated from his wife and wanted to talk about it. They ended up chatting later that night and the next morning, the coach said.

Mejia led the team through stretching exercises. His confidence has soared since his freshman year. A course in public speaking helped, he said, and friendships on the team have brought him out of his shell. Before a recent game, he was spotted shimmying to music and joking with the two young daughters of Jonathan Pena, 32, a former player who is the associate head coach.

Pena had come to Berkeley with a short fuse, and he played little in his first season. But Christiansen counseled him on managing his emotions, and Pena became Berkeley’s starting point guard and captain, then joined the coaching staff, initially as a volunteer.

At practice this night, Pena oversaw the big men. Sweat soaking through his shirt, he issued orders in rapid succession: “Jump to the ball!” “Turn around quick!” Finally, Pena jumped into the fray, bodying up post players over a half-foot taller.

On the opposite end, guards worked on ballhandling and shooting as Christiansen watched from under the bill of a New York Giants cap. He shouted encouragement — “Let’s go! Look alive!” — and high-fived or hugged players who crossed his path.

Soon, the coaches and players were back on the subway.

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Johnnie Green, Mejia’s fellow team captain, attending a class in Manhattan last month. “I’m just so hungry to better myself and get in a better situation,” Green said.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

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Johnnie Green, a senior captain, in a home game against Alfred State in January. At 26, he was bouncing between low-paying retail jobs, he said, “just trying to find myself.”CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

Green rode to Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman Houses, a city housing project, where he lives with his mother. “There’s times I walk home and hear gunshots going off,” he said.

He usually stays up late studying and wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to work out or study more. Often, he watches motivational speeches online recommended by Pena.

“I feel like there’s not enough time in the day,” Green said. “I’m just so hungry to better myself and get in a better situation.”

Pena recently completed a master’s of business administration at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn. He works full time as a customer relationship manager at the Weather Channel in Midtown.

His trip home to Queens, where he lives with his wife and daughters, can take two hours. As he sleeps, Pena keeps his cellphone on — next to his Bible — in case a player calls.

“I tell them, ‘If you go through something, we’ve got to be the first ones you call,’” Pena said. “Maybe they don’t have that kind of support in their life.”

Keep Moving the Ball

In November, Berkeley avenged its last loss with a 76-72 win over Mercy, after trailing by 12 points at halftime.

With a trapping full-court press, the Knights lead all U.S.C.A.A. Division II teams in forced turnovers (24.2 per game). Offensively, Christiansen said, “as soon as we get the ball, we run.”

“We don’t walk,” he continued. “We don’t dribble the ball a thousand times. We get rid of it.”

Past Berkeley players are closely following the team’s streak. Christiansen stays in touch with former players, nearly a dozen of them said in interviews. They hear from him on holidays and meet with him if they need advice, professional or personal.

Chan-Man left Berkeley shy of graduating because his mother became ill. But, he said, Christiansen and Pena still call or text him on his birthday — and on his daughter’s — and check in regularly about his mother’s health.

“It’s not like we won the championship and then I got kicked to the curb,” Chan-Man, who has no basketball eligibility remaining, said recently. “There’s love there. You can tell.”

At halftime of a home game against Florida National University, with Berkeley leading by 9 points, Christiansen strolled toward the locker room. Abruptly, he stopped, frowned and faced the bleachers.

“In the second half, I want you to be loud!” he screamed. The crowd of a few hundred people turned up the volume.

Christiansen wasn’t satisfied. “Louder!” he yelled. The fans obliged.

“At the end of each season, I’m so tired I honestly say, ‘That’s it, I want to quit,’” Christiansen said. “Two weeks later, I miss these kids and I’m back.”

Green’s routine includes morning classes, helping fellow students as part of a federal work-study program in Berkeley’s career services department and volunteering once a week as a basketball instructor for children. In August, he will become the first of six siblings to graduate from a college program, earning his associate degree.

Mejia has been juggling school, basketball and 20 to 30 hours a week working at an Italian restaurant. He landed the job with help from Christiansen, who works with Berkeley’s career services to find employment for his players and who knows the owner of the restaurant. Mejia’s income helps pay the rent on his family’s apartment in the Bronx.

In the bedroom Mejia shares with his grandfather, a Berkeley pennant hangs on the wall above a poster featuring a Michael Jordan quotation about persistence.

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Mejia, who once spent about a year in a homeless shelter, shares a bedroom with his grandfather at the family’s apartment in the Bronx.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

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Mejia, right, heading out with family and friends after the victory over Alfred State. He has been juggling school, basketball and a restaurant job.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

Mejia has a 3.4 grade-point average, and he received a $2,000 academic scholarship this winter from the New York City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Christiansen accompanied Mejia to the ceremony.

Mejia began an internship last month with BevForce, the company where Conner, the former assistant coach, works.

After graduation in May, Mejia plans to volunteer at a church in Inwood, in Upper Manhattan. His role: basketball coach and mentor.

“I’m ready to take on the world,” he said, “whatever comes my way.”

Correction:Feb. 27, 2017

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified the Berkeley College player walking behind Massiah Merritt’s son, Jasiah. It was Torrence Ested, not Merritt.